Chapel of Hope Stories

Dear Reader:

“You know you can’t shine if you don’t fill your lamp.” Another platitude from Grandmother Wilson…she didn’t use it as a spiritual metaphor (though certainly it fits several scriptural verses)…but as a way of telling my brothers and me that we wouldn’t get through the day playing or working on the farm without something in our stomachs- that something was usually oatmeal. (I still don’t like oat meal to this day…I am a grits gal!)

Back in history…before the days of electricity (And Lord don’t get me started on this SCE&G/Dominion fiasco…I get worked up just thinking about these “back-stabbing” utility monopolies…Where is Theodore Roosevelt, the “Trust Buster,” when we need him most?)

Throughout history different types of oil kept the lamps and lanterns burning…from olive oils to kerosene. (The title photo is a picture of a wine bottle light (electric) with a bottle of body oil beside it…I have had the bottle light for 7 years in my bathroom and it has never burned out…not bad, huh?)

Source: “Keep Your Lamp Filled with Oil” R.J. Dawson)

In Dawson’s take on oil and light….he sees another perspective on this old platitude…and I really like it.

“When believers let their lamp go out it is because they are living today on yesterday’s oil.”

“The Lord alluded to new wine skins being necessary on given occasions of new growth and new spiritual output. Doing things the way we did it yesterday does not necessarily work in the here and now. It never works in the future.

God changes course a lot and does new and different things all the time. Without following Him and paying attention one can never keep up. It is always sad to see so many Christians living in the past and refusing to allow themselves the refreshing renewal and change for the better that comes from truly following the light of God. God is never stuck in the past.”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Yesterday I decided to consciously do something to help someone else…and recognize God’s love through every day beautiful objects placed in my path.

My good deed was walking down a couple of blocks to return mail to a resident on another street in my neighborhood since the bulky letter was marked International Air and looked like something you would be waiting to receive.

My eyes were attuned to God’s love through several stops Thursday and Friday I made to just thank God for loving us so much that it spills over into our daily lives…no matter where we are.

I pulled into Hutchinson Square to see the new fountain that has come in…I love all the sitting benches around it…perfect place to eat lunch or dinner in the warmer, lighter seasons.

I looked at next week’s weather forecast and determined “Little Big Red” can be put back out on the bench…some of his leaves looked a little yellow…he wanted back outside. In spite of being inside so long, however,…his stems have grown and clusters of buds are popping out all over. * I think we will have “RED” for Valentines!

But the prettiest sight I saw this past week was when I drove by this gorgeous house on Central near the Baptist Church and the Japanese tulip trees (in the front yard) were already just about pop open…how about that…on the first of February…that is early even for these trees.

So until tomorrow…Let us remember to keep our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual lamps filled with oil…so we won’t get left behind in the darkness as God pioneers us into the future.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

And oh…by the way Happy Groundhog Day! (I say we split the six weeks evenly between winter and spring…diversity is good for the soul.)

Dear Reader:

We made it through January…always a difficult month….still paying for Christmas…starting to work on taxes…usually our coldest weather in the lowcountry…simply… a  l-o-n-g month in more ways than one.

But we did it! Today is the first day of February…we usually think of Valentines first for this month but actually old “Groundhog Day” pops up tomorrow. Since the groundhog is rarely right about the rest of a long winter or early spring forecast…I don’t give it much thought… but I did like the movie.

It was while I was looking for some old valentine boxes from the grandchildren to place the little rabbit on for this month’s “Good Grace” ritual picture (“rabbit, rabbit, rabbit”) to carry us through the month that I came across a Valentine’s card I got from Eva Cate and Jake a couple of years ago (with a little help from an art teacher/mother.)

I love to  pull it out each year. * Unfortunately I put it too close to a house plant (one Valentines) that I over-watered and it got some water stains… by close proximity… Consider it just loved a lot.

All of this got me thinking, however, about the gestures we make with our children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces when they are little….spreading our hands out as far as they will go and proclaiming “I love you T H I S much!” So…What if we did the same thing for God? Don’t you think our Creator would appreciate knowing just how much we love Him?

This was a wonderful little article that popped up a couple of days ago that got me thinking about God in this direction. Let me share a short excerpt with you.

Source: “I Love You This Much: by Victoria York, from  365 Devotions to Love God and Others Well

I Love You Too

You should love Him, your True God, with all your heart and soul, with every ounce of your strength. — Deuteronomy 6:5 The Voice

Just as God expresses the extent of His love for us through the wonders of His creation, we can express our love for Him through a selfless and servant-minded life.

I love you, God says, as He splashes the night sky with a million stars.

I love you too, we say, as we forfeit an evening of relaxation to cook supper for a sick relative.

I love you, God says, as He sends a raincloud to cool a stifling August afternoon.

I love you too, we say, as we forgive our teenager for words spoken in haste.

I love you, God says, as He scatters a thousand wildflowers across an open field.

I love you too, we say, as we refuse to fret and worry over a company lay-off.

Family life, marriage, work, friendships, seasons of joy, seasons of suffering — they all offer daily opportunities to follow, to obey, to say… “I love You, God.”

For this New Year I now want to repeat Father Timothy’s daily prayer (he uttered each morning during his whole fictional life span…)

“Lord make me a blessing to someone today” …now followed by spreading my arms out as wide as I can “I love you this much God!”

Think about it…the way God shows His love for us is through His creation…through all the beauty He places in front of us each and every day…sometimes at just the right moment.

About a week ago when I went to the Charleston Cancer Center for more blood work…I stopped and took a picture of the pretty landscape leading into the entrance…it just made me happy and helped dispel any anxious thoughts I might have had concerning medical procedures. The beauty of the earth is a reminder from God that He is with us through each step of life…

So until tomorrow…Through every detail of my daily life, I want to say that I love You, too, Lord! Amen.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*Don’t forget to say “Rabbit” today…the earlier the better! All of us want a great month ahead and with the “luck” of having God’s “Grace” it should be a good one! 🙂

Dear Reader:

Sometimes we just need to stop and clean out the refrigerator by eating left-overs we have put in there over several days. (When living alone this can happen a lot.) Tonight will be a left-over dinner but as you can tell from the picture…a really, really scrumptious left-over dinner!

I have talked about Eva’s Restaurant before in the blog….and the personal history I have with it….from 1972 on….but I was with my neighbor/friend Jane yesterday and she could remember eating in the restaurant in the early 1950’s after she and her husband and family got transferred to Charleston from Newfoundland.

She said when she and the family walked in the restaurant for the first time who did they see to their delight but two other couples who had once  been stationed with them all together…it was like old home week. (*And now new ownership has once again returned (in the nick of time) to keep the southern home cooking coming out of Eva’s again!)

They opened up under new management at the beginning of the month (January)…a new year…a new chance for Eva’s Restaurant. *Even the blackboard expressed a new way of looking at this dining experience.The new owners are Ray and Whitney Easterly who between them have decades of experience running eating places.

I got to meet the new owners and several of the new waitresses….everyone was so kind and excited about fresh prospects for the old restaurant with so much history. I told Whitney I wanted to give her the highest compliment I could think of…She and her husband had turned back ‘the hands of time.” Everything tasted just like it used to years ago when it was at its prime.

It was Wednesday so the tradition of baked chicken and dressing was on the menu and tasted absolutely delicious…the cornbread dressing was back to what I remember loving years ago. Eva’s long-time cooks are still cooking away and check out this dessert that was on the menu….I turned it down but it wasn’t easy. Homemade pound cake with strawberries and chocolate. (Monday is beef stew day…my other favorite of the week!)

*All the waitresses had t-shirts on re-enforcing the fact that Eva’s Restaurant opened in 1944 with ‘ simply southern’ cooking and it is still cooking today. I snapped this photo off the back of one t-shirt a waitress had on.

In life, as in eating, don’t we sometimes need to stop and just catch up with things going on that we haven’t had time to address or mention. It happens periodically for me while writing this blog…so here are some add-on thoughts to some recent posts.

1)  Lynn Gamache added another saying about “over the hill” that I liked- A dear aunt sent her this birthday greeting: “ If you are now over the hill, that means you are just gathering speed!” (Don’t you like that? …Yes I do Lynn!!!)

2) I caught part of a talk show on PBS concerning a doctor who has targeted modern technology (like we were talking about Wednesday with the GPS and all other computerized technology) with the increase in dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. While we wait for some voice to give us directions or to provide immediate answers to questions and problems in daily life… even spelling  it all out for us…our brains are no longer having to solve these problems using intricate, detailed neurons of the brain.

As a result we are losing those intellectual skills quickly. (In other words we are turning over our intellectual prowess to man-made machines we create…so the robots are getting smarter while man’s intellect  is going the other direction..a scary scenario for the future don’t you think?

3) “Only he who gives thanks for little things receives the big things.” Being able to get to a certain point in life where we can reflect on the social patterns that have evolved (which we can only decipher now)…is amazing and so much fun.

The statement above is so true when you think of people and how they handle fortunes and misfortunes. If people are appreciative about small favors done for them during the tough times, the misfortune times…they are just as appreciative of the large fortunes that come during the good times. Learning how to be grateful must come first before fortune arrives in whatever form it does.

So until tomorrow …Always appreciate and be grateful for what we have or are given…small or large…they have arrived in the form they have for a precise purpose…and that is God watching to see how we react to misfortunes and fortunes.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Dear Reader:

Guess who I heard from yesterday? Jeff “Foliage” …who shows wide-eyed tourists where to find the best New England fall leaves each autumn. More about this at the bottom of the post…but here is his email address that connects you to his amazing articles he has written.

https://jeff-foliage.com/

Every morning when I walk down the front porch steps it looks like the pansies have grown another inch at least in the barrel in the front yard….They are loving the cooler/colder temperatures at night with bouts of showers mixed in…it is their kind of habitat! They instinctively know the direction to grow… up…don’t we wish we had the same built-in radar to tell us which way to grow spiritually?

Humans are a part of nature….from animals to plants…we are all connected and for thousands of years we used this inner knowledge to maneuver around our home planet. Nature was our compass and our map.  Explorers followed the stars and constellations with their compasses pointed North…indigenous peoples (around the world) followed their “nature” culture to tell time by the sun and shadows, or morning bird callings or blooms opening on certain plants during the day. Each segment of nature gave time and directions to humans aware of their power.

Sadly today GPS is robbing us of these ancestral skills that guided us for generations… as far back as we can track. *True confession…I haven’t even turned my GPS on (“Surcie”) my new car. I figured I got along this long without it…I can continue. (Of course if I was driving in a new place or a large city I feel sure I would learn how to work it quickly enough)…but for my every day life the only thing I have used, so far, is my back-up reflector. (And even this I don’t entirely trust…I still keep turning my head around looking both ways.)

Aylie Baker, in her article “Signals Even GPS Cannot Detect” (Awakin.org) makes this observation.

“It’s scary to think about stepping back from these instruments, scary because stepping back might mean admitting that we never really learned where we are. For most of human history, this question has run like an umbilical cord to the core of who we are—and anyone who has been lost knows the waves of discomfort, fear, shame, guilt, loneliness, and longing that rise up in the face of not knowing.

Wayfinders are always reminding their students that each of us is capable of picking up signals that even the most powerful GPS could never detect. And we do, all of us, moment by passing moment. How ironic that we’ve designed wayfinding instruments and climate-controlled environments that shut out the many forces that are there, waiting to guide us. Humidity, vibration, shadows, birdsong—they reach out to us in every moment, silently imploring us to remember that we are—all of us, always—life responding to life.”

I experienced this first-hand about a week ago….I had gotten directions from Susan how to get to her new home for the birthday party for Lee the other Sunday. The directions were clear and concise…I wrote them down and went right there without any problems.

The next day Brooke came to visit and I took her to ride by Susan’s house to show her where she lived and got there, once again, pretty much from memory and back out again without a ‘hiccup.’

If I had used GPS and just listened to a woman’s voice telling me to Turn Right, now Turn Left…I wouldn’t have paid any attention to the landmarks that I memorized the night before. To me it is actually scary to think we are turning over the built-in directions in our lives to a voice coming from some hard drive off in a desert somewhere. There certainly is a place and time for GPS ….just not all the time.

So until tomorrow…As Katie Johann commented back from Aylie Baker’s article…

“Thank you very much for this article, Aylie. I  had an experience many years ago, when driving through LA, with GPS, and realizing its effect on me. Just that, the sense of being completely lost without this phone, and if I had started my journey without it, I would have had a sense of where I was. I think that GPS is only a small fragment of one large subject; our disconnection from nature. So many do not realize that we are, in fact, nature.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*Nature is definitely telling me that life goes on because all my plants intuitively know what to do and in what direction to go. I am envious!

***Back to the Wonderful News Guess Who I heard from yesterday! Jeff “Foliage”! Remember how I told his story from a CBS Sunday Morning Show on the fall foliage in the New England states in the blog post (November 5) “Looking for Fall in All the Right Places”?)

He wanted to give me his official email address in case anyone would like to contact him and read his articles that are available on his website. 

He wrote:

Dear Reader:

Whether we share some Irish blood in us or not we are all familiar with the phrase “The luck of the Irish.” Since I am part Irish and part Scottish…I must get my luck from the Irish side and my worrying from the Scots who are still known as the “little worriers.”

Actually the phrase “The luck of the Irish” evolved from the American Gold Rush and the 49’ers who went west looking for gold in the mid -nineteenth century. The most famous and successful gold diggers were the Irish or Irish-Americans. (Luck comes from a Dutch derivative gheluc…reduced to “luc” meaning happiness.) Perhaps as we will see the phrase should read: “The Grace of the Irish.” (and everyone else)

For many Irish workers… gold didn’t make them happy…probably from sheer jealousy…because soon other cultures painted the Irish as lucky but not deserving of their riches since they didn’t work as hard as others who were not as successful during the Gold Rush. Soon this slander resulted in signs like “No Irish Need Apply” for jobs since they were erroneously deemed lazy and just ‘lucky.’

A popular phrase today is the reference to someone as “Happy Go Lucky” meaning a carefree person who keeps a positive attitude and happy vibes around him or her.

The question, once again is, however….isn’t luck just good old spiritual grace from God? The same grace that differentiates us from all other religions…the idea that we don’t have to earn “brownie points” to have eternal life…or go through a series of hoops and loops or climb up some hierarchical step ladder with tasks assigned to each level?

There is no check-off list of things we must do here on earth? The former “earn or burn” strategy was replaced by God’s grace through His Son. It is the true crux of Christianity that separates our beliefs from other religions.

Webster’s New World College Dictionary provides this theological definition of grace: “The unmerited love and favor of God toward human beings; divine influence acting in a person to make the person pure, morally strong; the condition of a person brought to God’s favor through this influence; a special virtue, gift, or help given to a person by God.” ( God’s most special “surcie” is GRACE)

Haven’t we heard people say (or ourselves) “Oh it wasn’t anything…I just got lucky?”

As Christians our “luck” has a much deeper meaning. We should be saying “We’re not lucky…we’re graced.” Not only are we “graced” with God’s unconditional love for us…we are also blessed.

I ordered some Kelly Rae Roberts note cards (which came in yesterday) and I loved this one for it’s simplicity…no words inside…the one word outside is all we need to remember. “Blessed” (by God’s Grace!)

Rutledge and his two sports buddies feel lucky and blessed just being together as they learn new sports this year. Unconditional love from family and God is a recipe for success. *And Eloise feels it too…every day… especially when surrounded with stuffed animals to keep her warm inside and out.

Little Rhodes definitely feels unconditional love and God’s grace…to the point of being the cutest “flower child” around!

Dear Reader:

An expression we have to get used to in our society….sometimes as a joke at 30, especially 40, and from then on just whenever it pops up on a cake…usually on a candle in the shape of a tombstone is- “Over the Hill.” (Slightly humorous the first few times…not so much so if it continues ad nauseam.)

After everything I have been through for the past decade (in the health department area of my life) I am most thankful for birthdays and simply happy that I might be  ‘over the hill’ but not under it. Still it is strange to think about aging when our feelings inside don’t match our appearances outside. (I have always been so happy that I don’t have to go around looking at myself ….instead I get to turn that dubious occurrence  over to everyone else.)

Yesterday I happened to walk in the den when different celebrities (on television)were talking about age…the one I loved was “We might be over the hill…but who knew there were so many hills still left to climb?”

That thought stuck with me the remainder of the day. How true it is…it doesn’t matter how old we grow…there is no shortage of rolling hills to surround us chronologically. What would life be like if there were no challenges left…no hills to climb to see another beautiful valley or ocean or mountain in the distance?

I have been working on my ancestry sporadically and discovered that the Barbours originally lived in Northcumberland….the border between northern England and Scotland…it is a beautiful land (more castles there per mile than any other in the two areas) with rolling hills…one after another after another. (Title Photo)

*I couldn’t help but think that it was no coincidence that I was born in Cumberland County North Carolina while part of the family lived/lives in Durham, North Carolina…another famous English/Scottish location.

Since I am also working on different sides of the family for the children the surname “Dingle” originates from the term dingle meaning a small wooden hollow among woods and hills. ‘Dingle’ is used interchangeably with “dell.” (A dell meaning a small valley between mountains.) -In fact sometimes these hollows or valleys in England/ Northern Ireland/Scotland are called ‘Dingle Dells.”

*So if you ever remember singing “The Farmer in the Dell” ….the lyrics depicted a farmer, his family, and animals living in a dell or a valley…it could have been called  “The Farmer in the Valley.”

“The farmer in the dell, the farmer in the dell, hi-ho the derry-o…the farmer in the dell.” (He takes a wife who takes a child who takes a dog who takes a bone….sometimes ending there or sometimes the ‘cheese stood alone.’)

There is always so much more history behind nursery rhymes than we can ever imagine…just like there is so much more living to do beyond “over the hill.”

Kaitlyn took this picture of Tommy looking out over the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland… from the surrounding rolling hills and mountains….if it felt strangely like coming home…it probably was.

So until tomorrow…Aren’t we glad that there will always be another distant hill to roll our way and another mountain to climb….Just think…we would never have a valley if we didn’t have a mountain?

“Today is my favorite day”

t

Dear Reader:

Max Lucado  shares a free sample from one of  his books titled Because of Bethlehem, Every day a Christmas, Every Heart a Manger. 

In it the sample contains an anecdote that touched me and brought home once again how God’s divine spark is found in each of us….On ancestry.com… no matter the region, culture, race, or color we are all connected as children of God…we all share human DNA.

So when we go looking for the face of God… think about Mary staring down at her baby for the first time. “Gaze where Mary gazed. Look into God’s face and be assured. If the King was willing to enter the world of animals and shepherds and swaddling clothes, don’t you think he’s willing to enter yours? He took on your face in the hope that you would see his.”

Would you like to see God? We see Him everyday when we experience those “Aha” moments that leave us slightly bewildered but amazingly happy because we witnessed an act of God. What an amazing act of God is played out in the following story shared in the book.

 “In 1926  Dr. George Harley founded a medical mission among the Mano tribe of Liberia. The locals were receptive to the doctor and helped him construct a clinic and a chapel. Eventually Harley treated more than ten thousand patients a year. During the first five years, however, not one person from the tribe visited his chapel.

Shortly after the doctor and his wife arrived, she gave birth to Robert, their first child. The boy grew up on the edge of the forest. “He was the apple of our eye,” Harley later said. “How we loved our little boy! But one day when he was almost five years old, I looked out the window of the medical dispensary and saw Bobby. He was running across the field but he fell down. Then he got up and ran some more and fell again. But this time he didn’t get up. So I ran out and picked up the feverish body of my own little boy. I held him in my arms and said, ‘Bobby, don’t worry. Your daddy knows how to treat that tropical fever. He’s going to help you get better.’ ”

Dr. Harley tried every treatment he knew. But nothing helped. The fever raged, and in short order the disease took the boy’s life. The parents were distraught with grief. The missionary went into his workshop and built a coffin. Harley placed Robert inside and nailed the lid. He lifted the coffin on his shoulder and walked toward the clearing to find a place to dig a grave. One of the old men in the village saw him and asked about the box. When Harley explained that his son had died, the old man offered to help him carry the coffin.

Dr. Harley told a friend what happened next: So the old man took one end of the coffin and I took the other. Eventually we came to the clearing in the forest. We dug a grave there and laid Bobby in it. But when we had covered up the grave, I just couldn’t stand it any longer . . . I fell down on my knees in the dirt and began to sob uncontrollably. My beloved son was dead, and there I was in the middle of an African jungle 8,000 miles from home and relatives. I felt so all alone.

But when I started crying, the old man cocked his head in stunned amazement. He squatted down beside me and looked at me so intently. For a long time, he sat there listening to me cry. Then suddenly, he leaped to his feet and went running back up the trail through the jungle, screaming, again and again, at the top of his voice, “White man, white man— he cries like one of us.”

That evening as Harley and his wife grieved in their cottage, there was a knock at the door. Harley opened it. There stood the chief and almost every man, woman, and child in the village. They were back again the next Sunday and filled the chapel to overflowing. They wanted to hear about Jesus…the man with God’s face who could cry. Everything changed when the villagers saw the tears of the missionary whom they considered a “god” of sorts to them for his medical expertise.

Everything changes when we see the face of God. He came with tears too. He knows the burden of a broken heart. He knows the sorrow this life can bring. He could have come as a shining light or a voice in the clouds, but he came as a person. Does God understand you? Find the answer in Bethlehem…find the answer in an infant.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

So until tomorrow….Think about all the imaginary images of God we have seen depicted by the world greatest artists and sculptors…“But never in mankind’s wildest imaginings did we consider that God would enter the world as an infant. Jesus entered our world not like a human but as a human.”

Think God doesn’t understand you….think again. He was you.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*Kaitlyn called yesterday and surprised me with a visit to Summerville. We had a chance to talk and find out what is going on in our lives….between Christmas and the holidays it seems like time has just flown away…

Kaitlyn helped me pick out some new sunglasses….am sure all the children are happy about that…and a new pocketbook which I needed also….but mainly just the pleasure of eating, shopping, and being together….Thanks Kaitlyn for coming!

Dear Reader:

I adored my first grade teacher. Her name was Miss Walker and she had just graduated from college. We were her (first) first grade class. She was young and pretty, kind and sweet…what every first grade teacher should be.

But what I remember best about her is the saying in the title photo. She told us she had an art student from a community college in Fayetteville  come draw the owl (during the summer) and write the message on the board…because it would be the best lesson we ever learned. It stayed up on the (second) chalk board all year.

I came home the first day of school (and like everyone in the class) I had memorized the saying  because Miss Walker introduced it, talked about what it meant,why the owl is considered wise, and why the most important gift in the world is the gift of wisdom.

She ended with thanking us for being her first class of students. Miss Walker considered herself lucky because she got to be the very first teacher to start giving us a part of the gift that would continue a lifetime…wisdom.

I must admit mother and my brothers were pretty impressed when I spouted the little saying at supper that night. To this day I have never forgotten it….perhaps that is why subconsciously I keep choosing “Listen” as my word of the year.

By the end of that first year of school the message (behind the beautiful owl on the chalk board) was crystal clear. There was a gift called wisdom to be found in every day experiences…and now that we knew it…we must continue to open the gift and then share it with others.

I am as guilty as everyone else when it comes to praying for things from God like getting getting me a new car (oh right…God already did that 🙂 or getting me out of debt or providing  more luxuries…trips, clothes…we all know the drill. But our God is so wise… He knows that this is not what we need…and we would fail at it if He gave it…if we weren’t prepared with wisdom and understanding.

…“But when God expresses His love to His child, he does it by offering you something far more valuable than gold, something more priceless than any precious gemstone. He gives you wisdom. Why? Because wisdom will

prolong your life many years and bring you peace and prosperity.— Proverbs 3:2.

If you become wise, you will be the one to benefit. — Proverbs 9:12 NLT

God could give you anything, but He chooses to give you wisdom.

Wisdom is knowledge, with the spiritual insight to judge what really matters. And it is yours for the asking!” (Resource:  66 Ways God Love You) Jennifer Rothschild.

Today we see the true wisdom behind God’s greatest gift when we read that 70% of lottery winners go broke. Why? They didn’t have the wisdom to handle their winnings.

I am definitely wiser today handling financial situations because I was forced into this arena…sink or swim after my divorce. But God sent me wisdom through family, friends, and financial experts who taught me the ropes and somehow at the stage I am now…it has finally taken root.

So until tomorrow…Proverbs 3:13 Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding. So before we start setting short and long-term goals… including wealth..let us seek the wisdom we need to be successful in our endeavor of living a fulfilled life by God’s definition… whatever that may be.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Dear Reader:

I remember a long time ago being advised to always keep a notebook and pen/pencil in the car with me because our best ideas come when we are driving somewhere. How true that observation is.

Since “Surcie” is now in my life and I am driving myself back and forth each Friday to Mt. Pleasant some amazing ideas and thoughts have popped into my brain while making this weekly trip. (And I find myself (while at a red light) desperately hunting for a pen in my pocketbook and some kind of scratch paper in my purse to write the thought down before it is gone.)

So yesterday I stopped by Tuesday Morning to look for a coin purse/wallet to get my driver’s license, credit, medical  and car information cards organized into one wallet with different pockets. It made me feel so much better knowing I had all the necessary information I need if stopped or in case of a medical emergency.

After finding what I needed I went to the stationary section and found the (title photo) mini-notebook to keep on me at all times…in the car, by the computer, and on the bedside table while reading. Covered!

The only problem was….the title of the mini-notebook was “Sophisticated Sentiments” and I thought to myself…’No…Simple Sentiments‘…the best kind of thoughts about life.

While reading the Mitford series (which takes place fictionally in a small town in the North Carolina mountains- the author Jan Karon lives in Blowing Rock, NC) one soon realizes that the majority of the characters are not sophisticated at all…just simple people with simple beliefs…the best kind.

There’s Dooley, an abandoned ten-year-old boy taken in by Father Timothy to raise while his grandfather recovers from an illness, “Homeless Hobbs” ( Who had been wealthy and gave it all away to live in the most rustic, down-trodden conditions) Uncle Billy with two gold teeth in his mouth who can bring a smile to even the rector with a joke, Miss Sadie, the matriarch of the church who knows more about the town than anyone/the list goes on and on….The spirit of Karon’s eccentric but beloved characters bring home the power of community and acceptance.

From the very first Father Timothy quote I wrote down in Book One  (“Lord make me a blessing to some one today“) I have been filled with moments of pure simple insight and delight into questions I have often wondered about….and now realize I am not alone…even Father Timothy agonizes over what we mere mortals all do.)

Since yesterday’s blog was on “Circumstances” Father Timothy added this thought to it…

“There may be circumstances in this life that God uses to keep bringing us back to him, looking for His grace.”

But perhaps it is the unconditional love of Barnabas, an immensely large stray dog who adopts the rector as his family, who shows unconditional love the best in the series…through his eyes, in his dirty paws on Father Timothy’s chest, and his head resting in his lap. Without a word being spoken he opens the rector up to a first love with his “neighbor” …preparing him for the love of his life.

It is within this simple way of life and community that I am finding myself writing down more and more ‘simple sentiments.’

So until tomorrow I will leave you with one last sentiment:

The on-going joke in the series is Father Timothy’s fall-back line of scripture for himself and others when he has reached the breaking point…

“I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me.” * “For Pete’s Sake!”

*Today when I looked out at the camellia bush/tree by the bird feeder it was filled with camellias…12 blooms with what had only been two camellias last week. Sammy came looking for me again…I half-expect him now to come peck on the window…we still have our moment of togetherness with our stares. *True confession…I take a cup of birdseed and shake it under the bird feeder every few days…just for Sammy! We have come a long way in our relationship!

Dear Reader:

Tuesday was a benchmark closure day for me. I had to complete one last thing to get my old license plate (that I loved so much I wanted to keep) updated so “Surcie” would be a legal vehicle on the highways and I could throw my temporary car sales ‘license plate’ away.

For some reason my updated decals (for paying my taxes) on the former Saturn Vue were pulled off during the  time the car was taken. I got the license plate back… before the Vue was sent to its final resting place…with the decals missing.

So I was forced to go to my least favorite place- the DMV- To my happy surprise, however, I ended up waiting only about 10 minutes and then 10  minutes later I walked out the door with my new decals (hot off the press) having paid a small stipend of 6 dollars. Surcie lives now in my driveway, locked up always…her new home.

A big check-off to the end of a long set of circumstances that ended in joy and happiness! October 3 my car was stolen and now on January 22 it ended in victory and a special “Thank You”  God for being with me through it all.

During the months of being “wheel-less” and “home bound” friends would call and ask how I was doing and I would usually answer something along the lines of “Under the circumstances…everything is going okay.”

Last night I started on my second book in the Mitford series and I experienced a much needed “Aha” moment. Father Timothy was remembering a “salty old evangelist named Vance Havner” who  preached at his mother’s church one time (while he was still a youth) and did something Father Timothy never forgot.

“How’re you?” the preacher yelled out to the whole congregation one bright Sunday morning… and then proceeded to singled out one member to reply.

“Oh, pretty good, under the circumstances?” came the response.

“What I want to know,” said Havner, peering intently at the congregation, “is what is a Christian doing under the circumstances?”

(Father Timothy asked himself the same question…”What, indeed, was he doing under the circumstances?” “Straighten me out Lord” he prayed fervently now.)

The expression “Under the circumstances” basically means: an event or situation  you cannot control. Grandmother Wilson would call situations beyond her control…our “lot in life to bear.”

Like Father Timothy I realize we do need to turn over situations to God that we feel are out of our control….but we aren’t suppose to give up on the situation never improving…to just be a “lot to bear.” God surely didn’t intend for us to “barely” get through life with no joys or happiness. He couldn’t have created a world as astoundingly beautiful and abundant for us to “bear the cross” with no hopes of changing the circumstances surrounding our existence.

I realize now when I have a temporary set-back or set-backs…it is only temporary…if we ask God to provide us with the solution. I have seen it happen again and again in my life ….yet I still seek reassurance from God for my faltering faith when the next crisis appears on the horizon.

Poor God…if He could endow each of His children with just one teeny tiny sliver of faith and endurance that would continue our whole life time…it would sure save Him having to re-teach us that “circumstances” lesson again and again…because circumstances are  just that…circumstances. They come and they go like life’s up’s and down’s.

So until tomorrow…God is the one constant in our lives…so the next time someone asks me how things are going I think I will give the same response I heard our beloved Poppy say over and over (no matter the circumstance)…“I never had it so good!” 

“Today is my favorite day” Winnie the Pooh

*Sis Kinney took her grandson to the Avery County Library to pick out a book. While there she looked up at the book case…it was “Ruthie” from Gloria Houston’s Christmas children’s story: “The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree.” (In the story…Ruthie and her mother cut down the tree from off Grandfather’s Mountain which is in Avery County. Sis…you came full circle! And thank you for taking time to share this wonderful God Wink with us!)